So my parents want me to design them a home theater system and I've started looking into what I want to do. I was thinking two back loaded horn full rangers for the front surrounds, a sealed or aperiodic center speaker, and either needles or just straight up bass reflex for the rear surrounds.

Heres the challenge...

I need to fit a back loaded horn into a very strange shape. First of all both the mouth and the driver have to be on the front. The space I have to fit it into is 18" x 12" x 23" so pretty small.

I like the Fostex FE166En a lot but all the horns I've seen with it have been huge so idk if thats enough space for it.

I made a quick cad file based off of Tom Zurowski's PAWO of the approx shape I was thinking. I don't know too much about horn design so this may or may not be viable.

I made the cad file before I knew the exact dimensions so as it is it is too long to fit the space.

Sorry about the low quality pics... The speaker has to go in the cloth covered cabinet that I have a close up of.

Luckilly if I do the baffle right I will have pretty much no baffle step issues

It's 18" wide, 12" high and 23" deep. Sorry for not specifying. In that case do you know of any designs that would work with that driver that could be adapted?

Also what do you think about that driver for this application? It's going to be for the front surrounds and I've heard that some store bought receivers high pass around 80hz, ours is a denon. I like this driver because compared to other drivers in the price range its lower frequency response is pretty flat but idk if its overkill for this

It's 18" wide, 12" high and 23" deep. Sorry for not specifying. In that case do you know of any designs that would work with that driver that could be adapted?

Also what do you think about that driver for this application? It's going to be for the front surrounds and I've heard that some store bought receivers high pass around 80hz, ours is a denon. I like this driver because compared to other drivers in the price range its lower frequency response is pretty flat but idk if its overkill for this

If anything like my own Denon HT receiver ( AVR1610), the speaker setup / XO options are far more flexible than simply 80Hz - I settled on 120 for my own set-up, but I think it can go much higher than that. As I've often noted based on my own experience over the past couple of year, it's quite possible to get very satisfactory and well balanced surround set-up with much smaller drivers than the FE166E or more practical in your case due to available space, the FF165WK.

Keep in mind that 60% of the soundtrack is delivered by the center channel, and that in most cases the rear and front height surrounds can easily be filtered well above 120Hz with no significant loss of effect.

While a lot of folks would not consider a 6" or larger full-range driver to be overkill for "realistic theater performance levels" of a 5 or 7.1 system in a larger room, there are lots of advantages to smaller drivers that in my opinion fit quite nicely with real world constraints and listening habits.

Previous to my current Alpair7 & 6 setup, I was using FE167E and FE127E - the current FF165 and 125 WK would certainly work quite well, and require much smaller enclosures than 166E.

Try to stick to the same make and model of driver for the main front row 3 with smaller drivers from the same family for the surrounds.

Also what do you think about that driver for this application? It's going to be for the front surrounds and I've heard that some store bought receivers high pass around 80hz, ours is a denon. I like this driver because compared to other drivers in the price range its lower frequency response is pretty flat but idk if its overkill for this

You get bass out of an FE166En only if it is horn loaded, and no proven horn will fit your space. And futher, given an HT receiver, these drivers show off the worst in the electronics... you'd be better off using something less efficient.

These are for front surrounds? They should probably be angled downward to keep from getting too much early HF reflection off the ceiling and to get some to the viewers. I'd suggesy something smaller and the same as that used in the main surrounds, and of the same family as the LCR that carry most of the load. ie the entire speaker system needs to be done together as a system.

Sorry they are the main surrounds I guess. Its a 5.1 system. I'm not super familiar with HT terminology.

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They should probably be angled downward to keep from getting too much early HF reflection off the ceiling and to get some to the viewers.

I was planning on angling them down a little bit inside of the cabinet (not speaker box)

I don't know if my mother will let me do the rear surrounds because we have in ceiling ones now and she may not want anything visible. I looked at the space and realized there's two corners that look prime for little shelfs with towers on them which would be out of the way so she may let me do that.

If she did...

Considering that I probably don't have enough room for a What do you think about four bass reflex speakers with these or maybe these for the surrounds.

I don't know much about design considerations of these systems so what do you think I should use for the center? The same thing or a sealed or transmission line or something?

We have a sub as I mentioned so it wouldn't be tragic if the speakers didn't go that low

If your sub goes high enough, then why bother making horns? Compact horns never go deep, which you want for home theatre use. Assuming that your sub is good enough, have a look at re'atively compact closed cabinets all around.